Services / Project & Programme Management Training Services

Driving Up Project Success Rates

Project & Programme Management Training Services

Companies are realising that preventing projects coming in significantly over budget, running drastically late or being cancelled requires a combination of formal training, knowledge sharing, and practice. Communication of a standard approach is also essential. Everyone can learn how to effectively and efficiently manage a project. It just takes the right people to show them.

Doldrum Bay Consulting has developed a series of customisable Project Management Training Events that can successfully enable your organisation to introduce a complete Project Management approach. The objective of these events is to be as practical as possible, enabling participants to be productive immediately after attendance.

Our training events have been developed based on the Project Management Institute (PMI®) approach along with the principles of the PRINCE2® methodology.

Our steppingstones to successful Project Management training are to:

Listen to your unique organisational training needs
Partner with you to assess your internal project and business environment
Team with you to customise our training events so that they fit, not only your specific requirements, but also your business cycle and schedule.

Modular approach

To enable easier customisation, these training events have been developed in a modular fashion, to handle the basics of your company’s current Project Management standards or approach, or a more generic approach.

All training events compliment both the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®, as defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI^®) *, and the PRINCE2® ** methodology. This training is taught in an environment that promotes teamwork and professional growth.

Classes may be delivered at your own site, or at another suitable location (for example, a local hotel or conference centre). Because your time is valuable, our custom modules are generally one to two days each in duration. This enables you to plan the training over a period to reduce impacts on your existing project workloads.

Our goal in delivering these training events is to make sure each student learns practical applications and best practices. It is not enough to teach the theory. We want to demonstrate the best ways to be successful in applying the training in a real-world setting so that it will make an impact on your organisations' bottom line!

Expected benefits

The expected benefit is for you to have a fully trained, efficient and effective Project Management practice, with the right knowledge in place to enable projects to be delivered on time, within budget and to your expected quality levels. Your Project Managers will be able to keep you informed at all stages of the project life cycle on the status of your projects and you can reduce your dependence on ‘heroes’.

Types of available training and associated levels of achievable competency

Doldrum Bay Consulting can provide various levels of training to enable the achievement of several different levels of competency. The table below describes these different levels.

Training Level	Competency Achievable	What should an individual be capable of at this level	Training Type and description	Suggested Audience
Level 1	Awareness	At this level, an individual should have a very high-level understanding of the principles behind the concepts of project and programme management and understand the benefits of following such an approach.	Short customised presentations, such as team briefings, or senior management meetings. These sessions are often used to 'sell' the concept and benefits of following an organised and standard project management approach to key stakeholders such as senior management, or to the teams that would be expected to follow this approach.	Potential project teams, department heads, senior management
Level 2	Familiarisation	At this level, an individual should have a good general cognisance and understanding of the principles and standards behind the concepts of project and programme management and should be able to begin applying these principles and standards.	Standard sit-down training or information session. The purpose of these sessions is not to transfer large levels of skill but to have the attendees get an understanding of the topics covered and their general roles and responsibilities within the project management practices within your company.	All Project Managers, Business Managers and Team Members
Level 3	Application	At this level, an individual should have a deep understanding of the tasks and activities required to apply and put into practice project and programme management.	Standard hands-on training sessions. These are designed to enable Project Managers to become more than familiar with the use of a standard approach to Project Management and associated skills. This is reinforced using either a basic set of deliverables from your company’s own Project Management methodology or a more generic set of deliverables that we can provide. The overall objective being that the Project Managers can begin applying the skills at the earliest opportunity, following an approach approved by you and using a set of pre-defined and common deliverables.	Project Managers
Level 4	Mastery	At this level, an individual should have considerable skill and knowledge in project and programme management, as measured by the ability to adapt this expertise to diverse situations and be able to teach others how to do this.	Mentoring, and one to one training. A workshop style is used for customised and one to one training. This places a more practical/hands-on emphasis on the training	Senior Project Managers
Level 5	Expert	At this level, an individual should have exceptional skill and knowledge in project and programme management, as measured by the ability to evolve the project and programme management processes, practices and expertise within the whole company.	Mentoring, one to one coaching.	Senior Project Manager, at a section, unit or company director level.

Suggested training programme and roadmap

Doldrum Bay Consulting can provide a comprehensive Project Management Training programme that covers the complete project life cycle.

What training do you need?

The project management training requirements for each company will differ. These differences often depend upon where in the project management maturity life cycle a company currently is and where they want to get to.

Click here for a white paper giving details on the project management maturity model that Doldrum Bay Consulting use and the effect the use of such models can have in enabling organisations to maintain competitive advantage.

Training Needs Analysis

To determine where your company and its employees are on the project management maturity life cycle, we recommend performing training needs analysis (TNA). This analysis will enable you to understand what level of training would best suit your requirements, situation and needs, and a roadmap for your journey on the project management maturity life cycle.

This analysis can take the form of:

A short online, file based or paper-based survey with key players or stakeholders
A brief workshop with key players
A brief one to one meeting with key manager or influencers in your organisation

The output from the TNA will be a plan for how best to improve and/or transform your project management activities into a world class approach.

Learning Modules in the Doldrum Bay Consulting Project Management Training

As the project management training requirements for each company will differ, we have broken our training into separate modules that can be easily tailored to cover the basics of either your own Project Management standards or approach, or a more standard generic approach based on the PMI^® or Doldrum Bay Consulting approaches.

The following two sample approaches demonstrate this modularity. The design that will best suit your business will be assessed based on your Training Needs Analysis.

Sample training plan 1 - when following a PMI® based project management approach

The following diagram shows the suggested modules and routes through the learning events if you wish to follow an approach based on the PMI^® methodology

The Level 2 Project Management Foundation course (PM201) is designed to give all attendees a good understanding of the benefits of following a PMI based project management approach. Experience has shown that this course is a great way of introducing the basic concepts to all potential project members and to get everyone talking the same language. This is vitally important for the success of running projects, which is why we recommend that everyone attends this training course as a minimum.

The additional Level 2 courses are usually customised to describe the way that your company wants to run projects. This is a great opportunity for you to ensure that the key company messages and goals are understood and that everyone is now following the same approach.

The Level 3 events are designed to enable Project Managers to become more than familiar with the use of a standard approach to Project Management. This is reinforced by using either a basic set of deliverables from your company’s own Project Management methodology or a more generic set of deliverables from Doldrum Bay Consulting. The overall objective being that the Project Managers can begin applying them at the earliest opportunity. In this context although the training events do deal with ‘basic Project Management skills’, in a generic sense they are addressed primarily as they relate to the set of pre-defined deliverables.

The two recommended modules when following the PMI approach are Project Initiation & Planning Master Class (PM301) and Project Controlling & Closure Master Class (PM302). These have been designed to cover the complete Project Life Cycle, from project initiation through to successful project closure, and allows all attendees a hands-on chance to learn the tricks and techniques required to successfully manage projects. It is recommended that all Project Managers attend these two events.

The additional Level 3 courses help to ensure that your project managers and business managers follow standard or local best practice.

The Risk Management Master Class (PM304) gets your project managers and business managers thinking " what could possibly go wrong"; a first important step in helping to ensure that your projects finish on time and within budget.
The Business Case & Requirements Gathering (PM305) course is an opportunity to ensure that the business cases presented to senior management follow the correct company standard and are as thoroughly robust as possible. To do this, the course is tailored according to your own standards. If you do not have a standard, a generic one can be introduced based on the experiences of Doldrum Bay Consulting.

Sample training plan 2 - when following a more generic PM approach

The following diagram shows the suggested modules and routes through the learning events if you wish to follow a more generic PM approach or one based on your own approach or standards.

The Level 2 Project Management Foundation course (PM201) is designed to give all attendees a good understanding of the benefits of following a project management approach. Experience has shown that this course is a great way of introducing the basic concepts to all potential project members and to get everyone talking the same language. This is vitally important for the success of running projects, which is why we recommend that everyone attends this training course as a minimum.

The Level 3 Project Management Master Class (PM303) is designed to cover the complete Project Life Cycle, from project initiation through to successful project closure, and allows all attendees a hands-on chance to learn the tricks and techniques required to successfully manage projects.